This would seem to be the game IceFrog is involved with, together with their "DOTA" trademark seems to indicate it's their version of the game type.

update:

DotA-Allstars' roster of 100+ heroes is being brought over in its entirety. The single map games take place on is functionally identical to the one that you can download for free today in the Warcraft III mod. Items, skills, and upgrade paths are unchanged. Some hero skills work slightly better due to being freed from the now-ancient Warcraft III engine, but Dota 2 will be instantly familiar to any DotA player.

A few things will make significant differences to players making the transition. Dota 2 uses Valve's Source engine, so the game is much prettier. Source itself is getting a few upgrades, including improved global lighting and true cloth simulation. Dota 2's integrated voice chat is a huge step up from having to set up your own Ventrilo server, and the speed of voice communication is very nearly a requirement for a game as team-focused as DotA.

AI bots will take over for disconnected players, and will be available to play against in unranked training matches as well. However, don't get your hopes up for a full-fledged single-player game, though. Johnson says, "Our goal with the AI is just that their experience isn't destroyed just because one person couldn't finish the game."

It's hard to say for certain, but I think there is room for Valve to add their mark on DOTA. Just like there's latitude within the FPS genre that every game is not just a quake clone, I think there's latitude within DOTA for a variety of styles. What I would hope for would be like TF2 compared to TFC or Fortress Forever, a much more approachable evolution of the game, but keeping the same core ideas.

Regardless of what they announce, there will be whining that it's not something else :\

I loved Demigod so something more like that with much more stable online play so I can actually play the game would be an instant buy for me. If it's like League of Legends I'll pass as that's already available, free and good enough for what it is.

Over on the Defense of the Ancients website, anonymous developer IceFrog posted a blog noting that Game Informer -- that's us! -- visited Valve last week to check out his new project. Dude isn't lying, and tomorrow we'll be revealing that game and sharing all of the first details with you.

I absolutely LOVE Dota and Valve/Icefrog's approach makes me so happy. The game itself was amazing but what held it back was the archaic user interface of War III, the worst community in the history of video games and the hard level of entry. This is going to be huge.

One thing I wonder is will it be free, like Alien Swarm, or will it be paid for, which would do something against smurfing and make people a little accountable (financially) for how they behave as it's linked to the steam account.

"Our first reaction is to assume that [design elements are] there for a reason," project lead Erik Johnson explains. "IceFrog is one of the smartest designers we've ever met. He's made so many good decisions over the years in building the product. He virtually never makes a decision that doesn't have some reasoning behind it and a way to pick apart the logic behind it."

Dota 2, as a Valve project, will naturally use the Source Engine, which will get improvements to the global lighting engine along with true cloth simulation. Dota 2 will also gain integrated voice chat from its move outside of a Warcraft III mod. Dota 2 adds AI bots for disconnected players and for practice games, but there will not be a singleplayer campaign.

Steamworks will also be getting an overhaul for Dota 2 with support for in-game rewards, which can be earned by participating in the Dota 2 community. "Everything from unlocking new skins for your favorite hero to getting a unique title for writing a strategy guide is on the table," explains GameInformer. The improvements to both the Source Engine and Steamworks will be available to third-party developers after the launch of Dota 2.

Valve will also be adding a coaching system to the game, which will allow skilled players to log in as "coaches" and earn in-game rewards for highly-rated coaching, as voted by the students. A coach will be able to see the student's screen and give them tips and pointers over voice-chat.

"IceFrog was one of the smartest people we've ever met about doing that, and he was doing it with both hands tied behind his back, so to speak," said Valve founder Gabe Newell. He likens the future of Dota 2 as a "service" to that of Valve's Team Fortress 2. "Valve is going to keep building software around Dota and around the community and around Steamworks for Dota, but we're also going to build this system where the community can bring service to each other and be recognized for it," adds Johnson.

Dota 2, by all accounts, is a feature-laced port of the original DotA-Allstars to the Source Engine, not a new game. S2 Games (Heroes of Newerth) and Riot Games (League of Legends) both operate DotA-alike games, with HoN being much closer to the original DotA. League of Legends is quite different within the DotA sub-genre and is also free-to-play, supported by micro-transactions.

Valve's Dota 2 will be released in 2011 for the PC and Mac. Interested parties can find a lot more information over at Game Informer.

The coaching system sounds interesting, in combination to what they already do for TF2 and L4D.